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Neeraj Bhatia - Soft Territories

1: Architecture and Landscape Architecture Lecture Series 1: Architecture and Landscape Architecture Lecture Series showcases expert educators and practitioners from around the world. Reflecting on one topic from their individual fields of expertise, they share unique perspectives and insights into the fields of architecture and landscape architecture.

This lecture will focus on the use of soft systems of design and use the Canadian Arctic as a case study to examine the issue of northern housing. The intention of this work is not to embrace a tabula rasa approach to development in the North, as architects, planners and engineers have done in the past, but to engage and empower the unique social, cultural, environmental and economic challenges facing these diverse communities. This research/ design work uses the developments destined to come with it — ports, energy systems, research stations, military posts, and housing —to leverage a robust Northern-specific alternative social and ecological network. The time to find new ways to envision, plan, and act in this fragile context is now, before the economic engines of resource extraction and urbanization are set rapidly into motion.

About Neeraj Bhatia:Neeraj Bhatia is an architect and urban designer from Toronto. His work resides at the intersection of politics, infrastructure, and urbanism. Bhatia is a codirector of InfraNet Lab, a non-profit research collective probing the spatial byproducts of contemporary resource logistics, and the founder of The Open Workshop, a design office examining the project of plurality. Bhatia has previously taught at Rice University, Cornell University, the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, and is currently an Assistant Professor at CCA in San Francisco.

Presented by the University of Minnesota College of Design's School of Architecture and Department of Landscape Architecture, with support from the Cass Gilbert Lecture Fund and HWS Cleveland Lecture Fund. Additional funding provided by the U of M Institute for Advanced Study's "Resilient Infastructures" Research Collaborative